


To Be Forsaken

by Kragle (Lizardon)



Category: Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Child Death, Forsaken perspective, Gen, Loss, Monologue, My attempt to justify Sylvanas, Set early into BFA's story, not joking that was the original title, very early.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23369332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardon/pseuds/Kragle
Summary: A bond stronger than any allegiance unites the Dark Lady and her chosen people.A Forsaken Deathstalker shares his story with an untrusting orc comrade.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	To Be Forsaken

I was among the first to turn.

I was a pumpkin farmer in my first life. Born outside a small village just west of Brill, and raised with the same steadfast love of king and country drilled into the empty skull of every peasant child from Lordaeron to Westfall. I learned to parrot "Long live King Terenas, long live Prince Arthas!" before I could scant pronounce my own name. If you'd have asked me what I did for a living, you'd have thought that it wasn't manure and sun that grew our pumpkins, but undying devotion to the royal family that pushed the gourds out of the ground; as eager to feed the king as we were to serve him.

As a child my mother scolded me for my love of fairy stories. She said they'd rot my brain with fanciful lies, bless her dear old ever-still heart. Well, Ma, in my undeath I've walked the legendary streets of the gilded kingdom of Zandalar, shared drinks with the immortal elves of Quel'thalas, owe a Light-damned talking panda bear twenty silver, but how many times have I bared witness to your often lauded 'Good King Arthas'?

Ha, I'd snark about it to her face myself, had her body not been too rotten for reanimation.

In life, I'd been a good subject in every measurable way, the very picture you'd seen printed on propaganda posters during wartime. Had a wife and two kids, payed my taxes, supported the troops, went to church every week. 

Why am I telling you this, you ask. You asked about our Dark Lady, how anyone, even a bunch of maggot-faced freaks, could stand by someone so obviously corrupt, so evil. 

I've heard the rumors. The accusations us Forsaken are no different from the Scourge we supposedly freed ourselves from. That we serve our queen only because our minds have rotted away, that we don't know any better. Bunch of brainless zombies shambling behind the least rigor mortised set of tits amongst us.

Ha, no, no. Don't look so embarrassed. You aren't the first to suggest something like that, and I damn well know you won't be the last. Subtlety don't look right on the face of an orc.

You greenskins ain't got the brains for complex emotions like that.

See? Doesn't feel so good, does it?

When I came to, the first thoughts on my freshly-freed mind were of the only three things that had mattered to a simple peasant: my king, my farm, and my family. 

It would be days before I'd find out the fate of King Terenas and Prince Arthas, stumbling blindly to Brill only to hear the disenchanting news about Arthas's fall and patricide. It would be weeks before I'd find out that the soil of my home had become too poisoned with Scourge corruption to grow anything anymore, sunk so deep that even now the Argent Dawn have made no progress in purifying it. 

The loss of neither hit me very hard, though, because it only took moments to discover what had become of my family.

When I came to, I had been chewing on a rotting leg. The rotting leg had either belonged to a very tall gnome or a very young human. Dangling from the ankle had been the ankle bracelet I'd given my daughter for her fifth birthday.

I never found the remains of my wife. Only found the nail marks across her bedroom floor. Deep ones. Bloody.

You orcs think you know about loss, about sacrifice. How many amongst you have ever lost your free will? Reduced to your most primal instincts like a rabid animal, forced to carry the weight of your horrible actions for the rest of eternity? Your kind drank demon blood, yes, but that was a decision you made. I was a pumpkin farmer, not a warrior. A civilian. The Scourge bent my knee anyway. My prince commanded me to eat my own children. 

In one fell swoop, I lost everything, everything that ever mattered to me. Johnathan Knorr had died, stripped of his entire identity. And what did I do, without home, family nor king? I wandered aimlessly, and in those times I could completely excuse you for confusing me with my Scourge brethren.

Somehow, in my mindless state, I had found my way to Brill. The town had been completely picked clean by the Scourge. The townsfolk, now Forsaken just like myself, had piled into the inn like a flock of lost sheep. I joined them, at least fifty of us all standing around what remained of a fireplace, staring at it like it would tell us why this had happened to us. We stood in silence for days, weeks, months. We had no need for food or sleep any longer, so time had lost its meaning just like everything else had. Despair, orc, is contagious, and the despair the people of Brill carried was potent, viral and terminal. 

And then, just as it seemed despair would claim us for good, a miracle happened.

What do the angels of your shamanic religion look like? Ancestors? Lame.

I'll tell you what the Forsaken angel is like. Her voice is like the horrific screeches of the damned; angry, vengeful fury. She asks you the questions you're already asking yourself "Why did this happen?" and the much harder one "Where do we go from here?". And then she answers them. "We have been chosen." "We get revenge."

First generation Forsaken carry with us a despair that refuses to be sated. You'll see it in our eyes, if they haven't been rotted out yet, anyway. Orcs seek a warrior's death. We seek a spiteful death. Think of our blight bombs. Scorched earth policy. A few of us carry a blight canister in our chest cavities, just in case someone decides to shank us there. Fair warning.

When the Dark Lady came to us, huddled around a fireplace with no fire in it, she weaponized that despair. Despair burned in her just as it burned in us. She had been Ranger General, and Arthas cut her down in her prime, tourtured her, destroyed her city, turned her into a monster even more horrific than us. Humans had never been allowed into Quel'Thalas. And now, the general of the kingdom's army stood before us, with venegence on her rotted lips.

She told us that Silvermoon had fallen. Stratholme had fallen. There were rumors Dalaran to the east had fallen as well. Scolomance. Light's Hope. Gilneas.

But we were alive. Three human kingdoms and one elven kingdom, but we lived.

There was our purpose. On that day, the people Lordaeron became the people of Undercity. We would live as a parody of ourselves in our true lives. We took on new names. 'Rotface'. 'Biletongue'. 'Ratcrunch'. Self-loathing became our identity. We were loathesome and unnatural and disgusting and shouldn't be, but we were, and so we'd fight every brainless zombie with the zeal of a martyr. 

The Scarlet Monastery turned us away when they learned the Light burned us. We fought them, too. Stormwind, Arathor, Kul Tiras, closed their gates to us, calling us freaks. We fought them, too. The few surviving high elves rejected their own Ranger General. We fought them, too. Everytime the seeds of doubt planted into our minds, when despair looked like it would finally choke out our spark, the Dark Lady shot another arrow of witchfire into our hearts. We were chosen. We were Forsaken. This was our curse, but it was ours.

I never went back to farming. Sold my land for copper on what my ancestors bought it for. Didn't need it anymore. My queen didn't need pumpkins; she needed poison. My family didn't live on the farm; we lived in whatever corners we carved out for ourselves. I took up a sword, having never held one in life. Became a Deathstalker. You don't truly appreciate how many enemies you have until your job is identifying and stabbing them in a crowd before they do the same to you. You greenskins can march around any given Horde city with your big dumb green heads held high, but we go into a tauren town and we'll get that side eye and a "Earthmother bless you" from the polite ones and a "Your kind aren't welcome here, zombie" from the grandstanding bulls. 

Had a druid once tell me tauren are the most peaceful people in the Horde. Hah. At least goblins will admit they're sizing up your jugular.

We have no place in your Horde, we know. Not under Thrall, nor Garrosh, nor Vol'Jin. Even in an alligance of outcasts, none will call the Forsaken 'brother'.

Personally, it suits me just fine. It's easy to sleep with one eye open when your eyelids are already rotted away. And, perhaps, your fear isn't so unfounded. Death comes for all of us eventually, orc. Yes, even you.

Shadows hide you, and Dark Lady watch you.

**Author's Note:**

> BFA Made Me Hate Sylvanas and I'm Still Mad About It: The Fanfic
> 
> Yell at me about any minor lore discrepancies, God knows Warcraft lore is a clusterfuck, and I've never read any of the Chronicle books.


End file.
